You were born in the wake of the new moon.
I knew that you would be born in June. Your middle name in my heart was always June. It is your spirit name. Not the one printed in black ink above my own and your father’s on your San Diego County birth certificate. Nor the one burned in blue ink on your social security card, the one issued to from your failing government. Your secret name not of this world, not of your father nor of me, not of our weaknesses or vulnerabilities or the rough splintering facts of our daily lives. But of your spirit, the part of you that lifted above this world; that never belonged to it at all.
I carried you in my body in some sort of alien state in my third trimester, California. The first was spent on the Navajo Reservation in Chinle, AZ, and the second in Flagstaff.
Ocean Beach, 37 weeks pregnant:
I stood in the shower, arms weak washing my hair to get ready for work, dreaming of thick rainforests sweet and musky. My mind wandered above its trees, over stream beds full of smooth polished stones. I longed for animal mornings where I could live in the holy state of you and wait for your arrival. The truth: I have never nurtured reality, instead preferring to wander away from it like a child lost in a department store.
In real life I put on my scrubs and went to work as an obstetric nurse. I palpated so many other women’s babies inside their pregnant bellies. I hung their ampicillin and gentamycin and clindamycin. I held them while they were being anesthetized. I stood by while their obstetricians gloved and gowned to apply instruments to sacred parts of their bodies, to thrust their perfect beings into earthly life. You kicked me all night long, begging me to feed you, to sit down, while I rushed back and forth down the long hallways in search of drugs and supplies, donning gown mask and gloves, just barely obscuring the enormous belly where you hid.
Of course I was afraid of everything, afraid you would come early or come too late, afraid you would be born in the hospital where I worked, afraid that you wouldn’t come on your own and they would have to cut you from me. Until week 38 you were secretly breech, which we discovered it one night at work. I worried and cried and cried. They admitted me to that same hospital, gave me an IV and two doses of fentanyl and Drs Meshkat and Dowling turned you. Though it felt like we were both maybe dying I did not cry out in fear that they would stop and it would fail. In stead I sweated and dug my fingernails into the edge of the bed and the woman doctor asked if I was ok. But you turned, you beautiful girl, so you could be born the right way.
You warned me of your arrival for weeks. My belly would throb and I felt your head shift lower inside. Your beautiful father (sweet eyes that I dreamt of before we ever met, huge smile, small and wiry and strong, handsome, gentle hands) trained me like training for a marathon. We marched up and down hills, through miles of sand, alongside cliffs, down into canyons and back up. The day before you were born we went to the zoo and climbed up and down a few hundred feet of stairs, between exotic birds and monkeys, to help you rotate and descend.
Later that evening my estranged father called and woke me up. Hearing the phone ring coupled with the first strong contraction made me say, fuck! We got into the car and went to Home Depot to look for faucet adapters for the pool. While we were walking down the industrial aisles, me waddling forward with my massive obscene belly I felt amniotic fluid dripping down my leg. We saw the employee-former Marine that your father got into a fight with a few days prior and that made me laugh out loud.
When we got home we made the bed with the plastic sheet. I loved burying my face in it during contractions and hearing the plastic crinkle underneath it. It made me feel safe.
Between contractions we cleaned the house, folded the laundry, put up Christmas lights and got all the supplies ready. I drank tea and tried to teach your father how to hold me. We listening to some music and slow danced and that made me feel happy. Soon being in the tiny house became unbearable, so we went for a walk on the beach. We stopped every a hundred feet or so to have a contraction. It was dark and the beach was empty. The long dark inlet of the San Diego River so still and reflecting light. The pains made me moan and fall hands and knees into the dirty sand. I felt naked and wanted to run and hide.
Soon it hurt so much that I could barely walk. I wanted to go back to the little house so that I could throw up. On our way a giant old schoolbus painted with hundreds of Jesus messages drove by. I felt like I was losing control. “I fucking hate that bus,” I said to your father, who helped me hide behind a yucca.
When we got back I got into the shower as I had promised myself I would. Around then your daddy was getting tired and I told him to take a nap. This is going to take a long time, I told him.
For five minutes the hot water offered sweet relief. Then the fucking hot water tank ran out and I was left worse off then what I started. Your daddy laid down exhausted in the bedroom for a couple minutes while I tried to calm myself down. I laid my knees into the floor and my forehead into the crinkly bed. It was covered with one of the red blankets your father bought for our wedding out in the snow.
Ok ok ok I’m tired I need to rest, I thought and tried to lay down next to your daddy. I closed my eyes for two minutes and then one of pains called me forth like a city bus slamming out into an intersection. Whoaaaaaaaa I said, sweetie wake up wake up wake up! For some reason I thought his presence would save me from that soul-shaking pain. Out of his sweet love for me he sat in the corner of the bathroom, not talking, not touching me (I wouldn’t let him) while the pains hit me like twelve-foot waves, one after the other after the other. They pulled me out of my body, threatening to unglue my soul and all I could do to prevent this separation was to kneel in hands and knees position on the bathroom floor and puke. Help me! I moaned to your father, while not letting him come into the room. After all that I was shy and didn’t want him to see me throw up. Call the midwives! I said. I’m dying or I need an IV. He went out and called my mother to ask her advice. Meanwhile I tried yelling the pain away. God was nowhere to be found.
Finally, finally I looked down and saw three bright red drops of blood. Show! I said. Thank god!
The midwife that looked like a younger version of my mother arrived and tried to take my vital signs. Why does it have to hurt so bad? I said. It hurts so bad. I know, she said, sticking a thermometer into my mouth. I wanted for her to be the archetypal woman, her gaze reassuring me of my own power. All I saw was the font on her cheesy t-shirt, me thinking, why the fuck did we move to San Diego, I would have been better off in Chinle.
She went into the bedroom and turned on all the lights in the house. I had a feeling I was getting closer and suddenly I started to sense a lion awakening inside of me. I sat on the toilet yelling as if I was undergoing an amputation. The bowl filled with paper covered with blood and I knew I would have a baby soon. They laid me down to examine me and called me eight centimeters dilated. I couldn’t believe that my suffering was almost over.
I screamed out my last two centimeters while sitting on the toilet. Feeling the radiation descend from my lower torso into my ass, I started bearing down on my own. It felt like thousands of tiny knives cutting into my tissues but I kept reminding myself that I would not die. I got into the bathtub, whispering with your father and conspiring against the midwives. They gave me bad advice and no IV, and their presence I now felt was unnecessary. You were going to be born and I was going to do it.
Your father inflated the kiddie pool, flooded the living room and filled it a quarter-full of perfectly hot water. Your father telling me it was ready was one of the ten best moments in my life. I got in. In between pushes I watched the sky lighten with the dawn. I stuck my fingers inside of my body and felt the curl of your hair as your head edged out towards life. It was surreal, beautiful and perfect.
Your head halfway emerged and the midwife told me to stand. It felt like my body was going to rip open. Finally I let go of my fear and pushed hard. It hurt, hurt hurt and then all of a sudden I was holding you in my arms.
You were wet, and you coughed. You didn’t cry right away. I became a nurse, stimulating you so that I knew you would stay alive. I’m sorry for that: for my impatience. Your thick cord was still throbbing perfect blood into you. You were alive. You were ours.
A confession: at first you were a stranger. I didn’t recognize you. I held you and you were weighed and wrapped and nursed. It took me an hour before I realized it was ok for me to kiss your face. That you were our baby.
It didn’t come right away, but two days later I realized I loved you. I held you against my skin as you had finished nursing and I realized that everything in my life had led to this, I was born to be your mother. If I am never good at anything else I couldn’t care. Despite all the mistakes I have made and all the ways I am imperfect, you were perfect. You are perfect.
